1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to invertable thermally insulating carriers.
Thermally insulating carriers are used to keep hot food hot and cold food cold. It is often difficult to keep hot and cold food in the same carrier at the same time. Most carriers such as used for picnics, lunches, and other events are required to carry bottles or cans of drink. When such a can or bottle of drink is taken from a cold environment, any moisture in the air in the carrier will be caused to condense onto the surface of the can and so create a wet environment within the carrier. Depending upon the other food within the carrier or the wrapping used, such food may thereby be spoiled.
2. Description of the Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 3 848 766 and British Pat. Nos. 2 042 159 and 1 156 985 describe a thermally insulated carrier divided into two parts. Each part is provided with mating pockets so as to house bottles, cans and other containers with little or no air space remaining. This helps to reduce condensation since condensation can only occur from the volume of air to which the container is exposed.
Each part can be used as a tray to stably hold the containers in a moving environment, for example on the seat of a car or a train, to avoid spillage of the contents of the containers. It is important therefore, that part-consumed containers can still be carried by the carrier in an upright manner so as to avoid spillage. In use with the carrier opened and all the containers in one half it may be desirable to replace empty or part consumed containers in the other half. To close the carrier when there are fewer full containers than part consumed or empty ones remaining, it is often more expedient to transfer the few remaining full containers to the other half. In this event the carrier when closed will need to be carried in an inverted mode. This is not possible with the arrangements described in the aforementioned patents.